50 Pt. Climbs
 

This season, it seems as though there was a negative rep for the 50 pt. climb and dump. People said that it was a bad strategy for teams to solely devote themselves to and as a whole this was in fact a largely unsuccessful strategy for most teams.

My question, mostly to teams that attempted this but also to those who considered it, is why did you find this strategy successful or unsuccessful?

Keep in mind that according to EWCP's Twenty Four blog, a 50 pt. robot on an alliance should be more than pulling their own weight. The median alliance score was below 50 points (for qualification in week one, not the greatest sample but it should be indicative). There were few alliances in qualifying that could attain over 150 points and at most regionals few that could in the elimination matches as well. Statistically speaking, a robot that contributed 50 pts should be a huge alliance contribution.

Was it consistency issues? Was it too defensible? Why didn't this work?

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

I can think of a few reasons.
1) Lineup time. Depending on your climb start point, it could take a while just to line up.
2) Defense. As long as you didn't get called for interfering with a climb or contact with the pyramid, opponents that had to line up precisely had to go around you as a defender. If you played some physical defense, guides to help line up could be damaged (and in fact I saw that happen--the team who was trying the climb and dump couldn't line up the second time they tried it, despite the defender backing off).
3) Difficulty of climb. Take the number of 30-point climbers--reliable, consistent ones--out of the number of climbs attempted at any level. Not too terribly many, by comparison.
4) Now carry discs while seeing #3. And #2 due to defense being played as soon as color was spotted in your dumper. How many discs will make it?


When you factor in the rest of the game, say with a cycler (no floor pickup, automode shooting only preload with 100% accuracy, 10-point hang), that 50 points becomes only 40 (hang), then 22 (automode), or two cycles of 4 discs each. That's a moderate robot, one that would inhabit most regionals somewhere around the bottom of the alliance selections, maybe late first-round.

Essentially, a 50-point climb-and-dump with nothing else onboard to score is at about the same level as a robot that just does cycles with a good automode.

That said, when a 50-point climb-and-dump has something for, say automode, THAT's when it becomes difficult to beat. 3309 comes to mind--they shot during auto, and didn't show the C&D device until sometime around semis in L.A.--at which point they became the biggest target for their opponents' defender.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

For teams that could integrate a climb and dump with the ability to score discs in the high goal (67, 1114, and 1334 come to mind), the climb and dump is a way that they could raise their alliance's ability to score, but did not exclude any of their partners from scoring points. What I mean by this is that a 7-disc auto is great, but having two robots with 7 disc autos on the same alliance is superfluous. Having additional cycles beyond a consistent 13 total for an alliance becomes superfluous. Additional disc points past a certain point are exclusive from each other. Climbers that climb up the outside of the pyramid to 30 and dump in the top are not exclusive of other alliance partners' points (aside from colored discs being limited). Another interesting aspect of climbing that fits into alliance structure is that while climbing up the outside of the pyramid to 30 points would not exclude potential partners from points, climbing up the inside to 30 is an action that is largely exclusive to a single robot per alliance (perhaps not, but I'm not aware of 2 robots on the same alliance climbing up to 30 inside the same pyramid this year).

From an individual team design stand point, we made the decision on day 2 of the build season that based on our resources we would have to decide between primarily climbing/dumping and largely forgoing other disc points, or going for disc points with a 10 point hang. Based on our estimation of contributions we could achieve from different strategies, we figured we could choose either:
-about 50 points/match if we chose climb/dump
-about 80 points/match if we chose 10 point climb and scoring discs

We chose the second option because we felt that it would improve our chances of winning matches, and it also felt like a more repeatable strategy. Missing a single climb takes away all of our points. Missing a single cycle or a single shot is 12 or 3 points, respectively. All things considered, I would rather fail at missing a single shot than at missing a single climb.

With the decision on overall strategy determined, we moved forward with prototyping around functional objectives based on executing that strategy with our robot design.

It's not so much that the 50 point climb and dump was not valuable. It is just that perhaps many teams who tried it could have benefited from a competitive stand point by making a decision against the climb and dump early on. The teams that did execute it in addition to scoring lots of discs in teleop were extremely valuable as alliance partners, hence why 2 of them partnered with a 7 disc auto team and a great defensive robot to win IRI.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

Yes, and yes.

The simple answer is: it did work as EWCP predicted. Just look at 4451, a pure C&D bot who (as rookies) ranked in the top 8 at both of their regionals, reaching the semis at their first and finals at their second.

In addition to what Eric said, the first key to remember is that the Twenty-Four blog is about statistics. 50 points at early regionals will win MOST of your qualifying matches, IF you do it every match. There are no guarantees, especially when you factor in that opponents who recognize the threat will adapt to it.

The second key is that a pure 50pt climb/dump robot is capped at 50 points. They physically cannot score any more points, whereas a pure cycling robot will usually improve over the course of the event and season.

It was INCREDIBLY difficult to be a consistent climbing robot, and for most teams it took at least 30 seconds to climb, 5 seconds to dump, plus 10-15 seconds for alignment. If it takes you 30 seconds to get across the field, load up your frisbees and get back without any defense, you're already taking 1:15-1:20 seconds of the match to do your thing. If anything goes wrong, or if there's defense, or some combination, you really start pushing against the buzzer. Forget about trying to play some defense and then make a quick climb and dump at the end of the match. Not to mention that a simple human-load only disc shooter could often score more points in less time.

The kicker is that because it's a pretty all-or-nothing strategy, all it takes is a few seconds of delay and the 30 point climb/20pt dump becomes a 20pt climb and no dump (or worse). That's a pretty big points swing for anything going wrong in a match.

Lastly, climb/dump only robots had no auto mode contribution, which combined with my previous points means that they were generally a liability on an eliminations alliance. All other things being equal, if your opponent's robot scores all 3 discs in auto, and your climb/dumper scores none, that's a 36 point differential. You can theoretically make that up with the 50pt climb/dump, but some combination of defense on you and/or them scoring 5+ discs means that doesn't happen, and they win.

I saw more successful pure 30pt climbers that didn't dump in elims primarily because removing the need to go get colored disks and come back (the most defendable part of the strategy) meant that pure climbers could play some defense first.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

Funny you mention EWCP's TwentyFour blog. A post Andrew and I are working on will be debating the "was / was not worth it" arguments for the 50 point climb.

I maintain that with a fast enough climb speed, a good enough driver, and the right circumstances, a 50 point climber could have been an effective alliance partner all the way up to the Championship elimination rounds. I'll either finish that blog post or post again in this thread if I don't have time for the former.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

I'm glad I'm not crazy! Everything I was looking at was telling me that if it in fact worked a 50 pt. climb and dump would have been an incredibly solid alliance partner.

I don't have my team's scouting data from last year readily available, maybe someone else does. What was the average accuracy in teleop for the 3 point goal? Or really any goal for that matter? It seems that many assertions of why a RI3D robot was better than a pure climber was that it shoots at nearly 10% accuracy. I feel that there is almost no way that this could be the case and that most cyclers were shooting at around the 50% mark. I would assume that a quick cycler shooting at 75% would be the top scorer (or in that similar tier) at most regional events and possibly at a CMP division.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

I think the main issue with this argument is that it's based on a robot's theoretical ceiling. There's a big difference between having a 50 point ceiling and a 50 point average. On 11, we had a ceiling of 18 points in autonomous. Do you think we hit that ceiling every single match? Not a chance.

To add to the problem, if you only got 2/3 or even 9/10 of the way to the top, you get only 40% of your theoretical point ceiling. There's also a risk of falling once you get to the top.

Teams like 4451 who got 50 points nearly every match were outliers.

(Side note, the folks at 4451 are awesome.)

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

I would say IF the climber was fast enough building a pure climber/dumper was worth it. Unfortunately most teams with a fast climber had a frisbee game with them (67, 1114, 1918, 1986, 254, 1334, 3467, 1640, 71, etc) or they were very slow/unreliable. Some dedicated climbers didn't have dump capabilities which really wasn't the greatest decision because that put their ceiling down at 30 points.

A very deadly combo would have been a 15-30 second climber/dumper that could play very effective defense and block full court shots before climbing. I could see this robot doing very well at a regional and making into eliminations at the championship but it really comes down to how fast your climb is and how good your driver at defense.

Looking back I can imagine most teams who were strictly climbers wouldn't do it again if they had to redo 2013.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

In retrospect I think the biggest nail in the coffin is that there were easier and more reliable paths to 50 points. Scoring frisbees was easy relative to past FRC shooting games like Aim High and Rebound Rumble.

Lots of good insight in this thread

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

Let's think from a picking perspective. At Connecticut, there was a very good, consistent Climb/Dump, Team 2170.
We (20) we the 1st seed, and we were trying to figure out who to pick. We were between teams 195, 177, and 228. 2170 came up in our conversation, but they simply didn't offer the same # of points or the same versatility as any of the other three options.

I think Climb/dumper-ers failed (at least at later regionals) because of that. At MOST regionals, there were at least a few robots that could outscore a 50-pt climb/dump. And if you're looking to beat the first seed alliance, what do you want? A robot that will consistently score 50 points, or a robot that has the potential to score 80.

We talk about 4451 as being one of the most successful climb/dumps, but they never won an event(you can srgue that they should have, but the fact remains that they didn't), and they weren't picked at Champs because of this.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

What about IRI? 2 of the first 3 members of the winning alliance were 50 pt climbers. Other than having to share the 6 colored discs, this worked well and they came home with a blue banner.

Clearly, I have a bit of a bias on this subject as a member of one of those 3 teams.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

True, however none of those teams were a dedicated 30 point climber/dump. Both scored 3 of 3 in teleop with 3-5 cycles.

One of the arguments mid season was from teams who set out to solely climb the pyramid and/or dump and yet it wasn't a winning strategy getting beaten by simple cycling robots. The main problem in the dedicated climber strategy is it has to be something you can do reliably, quickly, and play defensively for the rest of the time to be a winning strategy.

I believe climbing can be a core part of a winning strategy. At IRI we had several matches where we were out of frisbees and all that was left was climbing. In semi final 1.1 our team finished 4 cycles with just under a minute left and I believe our partners were out shortly there after and 33 began sweeping the field.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

We found, generally speaking, that climbing and dumping was great for qualifications, but sucked for eliminations.

Simply put, in qualification matches there was so much randomness in the match-ups that, most often, climbing and dumping successfully would guarantee a win.

However, once we got to eliminations, the alliances were tougher, and often that 50 pts wasn't enough help to the alliance to guarantee a win. When you consider that, at the regional level, most alliances were set up as two scorers and 1 defender, that 50pts is essentially half of the alliances ability to score. When scores go over 100 points, you start to have a problem with not pulling your weight at just 50 points.

All that said, climbing and dumping was a great way to be picked. Either high-ranking teams figured they could handle enough frisbees that they wanted someone complimentary climbing, or lower ranked teams took a gamble on the potential big impact a climb and dump could have.

As a result, we did great at our first regional, seeding first and being picked first. We did worse at our second regional, seeding low and yet still being picked in the first round. In both cases we lost in the elims because our alliance just wasn't capable of putting up enough points to win.

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

2170 is a very good example of a climber dumper. In my opinion, their fatal flaw wasn't their design or strategy so much as their choice of regional. Connecticut is an incredibly deep regional, with several three cycler alliances forming and 100+ point scores being a requirement to break the quarter finals. I'd argue that if a team like them was available at the Championship, they had a respectable shot at being selected for the elimination rounds in the weaker divisions. They were even faster than 4451, had a drivetrain suitable for playing defense, and with the right driver and strategy could have robbed two cycles from an alliance while also scoring 50 points a match.

If we're defining success as "winning an event", I guess 67 didn't have a very successful year in 2013...

Re: 50 Pt. Climbs
 

I think for HOT, anything less than a world championship is a less-than successful year. :rolleyes: